To sing or not to sing that was the question

Imagine you are walking along a road and, ahead of you attached to a post is a large sign with one word, SING. Would you? Sing?

On this Stage 13 walk when I noticed the sign, I was in a location where I could neither see nor hear any vehicles, and houses and other buildings were absent. The day was glorious and deserved a song. Without thinking, my mouth opened and I sang. Full throttle. (Refer to my first posting for Stage 13 for the song and a You Tube rendition: A new milestone marking the 13th stage of my walk along the Derwent River: I reached the mouth on the western shore. Whoppee Doo!!)

Breathtakingly delightful. That was freedom at its best. I only felt a little sheepish when I stopped and realised all the birds had stopped making sounds. The bush was silent except for the hum of bees seeking nectar from native flowers.

I continued on the road and passed another hand painted sign at the entrance of a long gravel driveway. It read: Summer Song. The sign provided a phone number and declared ‘all welcome’. I hadn’t needed to walk up a driveway to sing. Besides it was only 9.25am – isn’t anything and everything permissible early in the morning?

Before long I spotted a nest of white wooden bee hives near a house. I wondered how the owners would label their honey. Wildflower honey? Bush honey? My favourite honey, which is only available in Tasmania, is Leatherwood honey made from the blossom of our native Leatherwood trees. This is a comparatively rare and flavoursome honey, and comes from a different kind of bush wilderness elsewhere in Tasmania. The website http://tasmanianbeekeepers.org.au/new-page-3/ provides more information about Leatherwood honey. The purest honey I have yet found is packaged by http://www.miellerie.com.au/ produced by an expatriate Frenchman south of Hobart.

If you are planning to visit Tasmania, then please plan to try some Leatherwood honey on your breakfast toast while you are here.

In writing this posting I discovered five distinct types of native bees exist in Tasmania: Reed bees, Leafcutter bees, Resin bees, Masked bees, and Homalictus bees. The site http://www.aussiebee.com.au/beesinyourarea.html#maskedbees provides further information and some pictures. I now wonder which bees were buzzing along Tinderbox Road.